Synopsis of A Boatful of Clear Dreams
In the fifteenth year of the Jiading era, Chen Mianzhou, a failed scholar, made a foolish decision. He would not return to his hometown, take up a position, or seek refuge with relatives. Instead, he rented an old black-canopied boat by West Lake, outside Lin'an, and became a ferryman shuttling between the lake and the hills. When people asked how he made a living, he only smiled and said, "Ferrying passengers is my side job. Ferrying poetry is my real livelihood."
At a spring-rain ferry landing, he carried a woman from the north who had brought a copy of Shuyu Ci south with her. He listened as she sang, "Do you know? Do you know?" until tears fell over the misty waters of the lake.
One summer night at Broken Bridge, he ferried a drunken painter. The man said his paintings were "always missing something." Chen Mianzhou handed him a pot of wine and said, "What you're missing is Liu Yong's line: 'Willows on the bank, dawn breeze, and the waning moon.'"
One autumn day beneath Leifeng Pagoda, an old monk boarded the boat without a word. He wrote a line on the deck with a dry branch: "The mountain's hues appear and fade in the mist." Then he stepped ashore and left, his kasaya sweeping up the red leaves on the hillside.
On a snowy winter day at Solitary Hill, a boy carrying half a volume of Su Dongpo's Song Lyrics set out to seek Lin Hejing's plum blossoms. Chen Mianzhou took him to the foot of the hill and watched as he walked through the snow and disappeared into the whiteness without looking back.
